1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer architecture and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for updating pointers to facilitate indirect and parallel data access.
2. Background of the Invention
In state-of-the-art digital signal processors (DSPs), media processors, and various other domain-specific processors, a single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) approach is often taken for parallel execution of a single operation on one or several vectors of data elements. In most contemporary register-to-register architectures (also known as load-store architectures), the data elements involved in SIMD operations are located in a register file.
For typical algorithms executing on these processors, such as those that implement digital filtering, it would be desirable to allow for flexible read and write access to the data elements of the vectors, that is, to the individual registers in the register file. Furthermore, it would be advantageous for access to the registers not to be limited to a contiguous range of registers nor restricted with respect to vector alignment.